Guidelines, Ethics, and Thoughts on the Future

In the year and a half since I started this project, I've gone through approximately 60 H-scenes and gotten to refine my translation and writing skills a fair bit along the way. You all have given me a lot of extra energy, which I appreciate.

In the future, there are a couple of things I'd like to be able to do.

First, I want to keep translating stuff. I enjoy doing so. Since starting Sadistic Women and completing Slave of Findom, though, it's been a bigger part of my schedule, and I want to make sure it stays balanced.

Second, I want to translate what I do in an ethical way.

Third, I want to create something original. Eventually.

The first two points lead me to some translation guidelines:

-Figuring out a new visual novel engine and writing custom code took me a month when I was doing Sadistic Women. That's pretty prohibitive, so I'd like to use an engine I'm already familiar with, or one that's very easy to use.

-I want my next project to be something I can finish in a year at a leisurely pace. 500kb of text/150,000 characters is a hard thing for most people to measure, so for a rule of thumb, that means a game that's 20 H-scenes or less. There are two specific very long, very old games I'd consider going down a deeper rabbit hole for, but they're both beyond my programming capacity at this point.

-I can't keep up the Patreon if I'm violating the TOS, so I'm going to do my best to follow them. It should be noted for clarity that this means I won't consider working on something where the characters are clearly under the age of 18. My interpretation there is there's leeway for high school students, but if characters involved in an H-scene are shown attending middle school or lower, that's a definite nope. Likewise, works with hate speech and the like aren't going to fly.

Ethics

Fan translation is understandably controversial in a number of ways. For my part, I've tried to be ethical about how I do things by distributing a patch that requires the full game and directing potential players to an official sales link, but I want to codify some extra rules.

-Newer works by more active studios are more likely to get licensed. I'm categorically ruling out anything that came out less than 6 years ago. (i.e. the length of a term in the Diet's House of Councillors.) The length is somewhat arbitrary, but the point is newer works are in general more likely to be licensed, and once you get half a decade or so out, the odds start to drop significantly.

-I only intend to provide a patch that adds on to a purchased copy of the main game. If the software and availability is such that I can't create a separate patch, I won't translate the game.

-If other works from a studio or circle have been officially localized, that tells me that there's at least some interest in doing so again, and I don't want to nip that in the bud or potentially be in conflict with an official release. Thus, if the developer has localized games officially, they're off-limits.

(I'm well aware that I haven't always followed all of these policies in the past, but I intend to do so going forward.)

Originals and the $3 Tier

Setting aside the issue of fan-translation itself, it seems to me the biggest problem others might have with this page is the $3 tier. While what's up there amounts to rough versions that I eventually make freely available in a more polished form, some could view it as paywalling the core translation. In the long term, I want to move away from a structure that could be construed that way. At the same time, I want to respect people who have supported me at that level, so the $3 tier in its current form will remain until one month after I upload the draft of the last Sadistic Women scene. After that, I'll be deleting the draft patch files from the relevant posts (though not the posts themselves), so they will no longer be downloadable.

If I keep that tier afterwards, I'll instead be making monthly patron-exclusive posts of some sort with original content. Either short stories, or reports on game development progress if I make any. The latter isn't exactly likely, but I do have typed outlines for two short game story ideas, one with a single heroine and one with multiple heroines, and I'm going to be playing around with RenPy, stock art and backgrounds just to test what I can do with it. If that doesn't sound agreeable, feel free to end your subscription at any point. I'll make another post when that change is about to go into effect.

To summarize, my new guidelines for selecting games to translate are:

1. I'd like to use an engine I'm already familiar with, or one that's very easy to use.

2. 20 H-scenes or less.

3. Work has to adhere to Patreon TOS.

4. If characters involved in an H-scene are shown attending middle school or lower, that's a definite nope.

5. Works with hate speech and the like aren't going to fly.

6. I'm categorically ruling out any game that came out less than 6 years ago.

7. If the software and availability is such that I can't create a separate patch, I won't translate the game.

8. If the developer has localized games officially, they're off-limits.

-Additionally, the patches themselves will no longer be posted on Patreon.

If you have a suggestion for a translation that meets those guidelines, feel free to contact me (either in the comments or via DMs)! I'll be keeping track of what people would like to see.

That's all for now. And hey, thanks for sticking around.